AIS Teamed up with Campus to Provide Technology for Student Zoom Internship Interviews

If one Zoom meeting on a schedule feels daunting, try balancing nearly 40 Zoom meetings at once. That’s exactly what happened for students in the Utah State University Taggart Student Center (TSC) ballroom in an internship interview event for students in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHaSS).

Supported by Academic & Instructional Services (AIS) with help from the Information Technology and staff members at the TSC, the internship event in January provided close to 60 students in CHaSS the opportunity to meet with prospective employers while maintaining COVID-19 safety guidelines.

Using laptops and ethernet cables provided by IT to keep each Zoom meeting strongly connected to the internet, students were able to have 15-minute sessions with nearly 40 companies hiring interns, allowing students to think about their future after college and meet with multiple companies during the same day. Different stations were set up in the ballroom, allowing students to rotate from room to room to meet with as many companies as possible.

“Having close to 60 students interact with almost 40 agencies in a meaningful way is always an ambitious program,” said CHaSS Clinical Assistant Professor Moises Diaz. “The idea of doing so strictly using Zoom with people changing meeting rooms every 15 minutes sounded unruly. All things considered I am humbled to see that it ultimately came together as hoped.”

The internship event took place over several days, sometimes late into the evening. It was a large group effort to not only have laptops available, but to coordinate technical challenges and interview times so students all had the opportunity to meet with prospective employers.

Technical Professional Robby Sproul was the on-site technician for AIS. Working with Diaz on schedules for interviews, Sproul was in charge of connecting each of the 40 laptops to interviews on time and making sure each student was able to have their interviews go smoothly technology wise.

“For how complex it was, it went along very smooth with minimal problems,” Sproul said. “It was a great success and an excellent example of faculty using technology to provide a better experience for our students for the circumstances we're in.”

While putting on the event was challenging, Diaz said the goal was to provide a sense of normalcy for students planning for their futures, while creating an effective way to bring students and companies together while maintaining health safety.

“Students have expressed a desire for some normalcy in a time of continual isolation and strictly online interaction,” Diaz said. “Combining this with the fact that our social service agencies and social work mission demand a strong individual and skill based fit in agencies, it was an important time to consider how to create more effective interaction.”